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arXiv:1812.00357 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Typical growth behavior of the out-of-time-ordered commutator in many-body localized systems

Juhee Lee, Dongkyu Kim, DH Kim

Published May 31, 2019• 31 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the typicality of the growth behavior of the out-of-time-ordered commutator (OTOC) in the many-body localized (MBL) quantum spin chains across random disorder realizations. In the MBL phase of the Heisenberg XXZ chain, we find that the estimate of the OTOC fluctuates significantly with the disorder realizations at the intermediate times of the main growth. Despite the consequent failure of the disorder average in the MBL phase, we argue that the characteristic behavior of the OTOC growth can still be identified by going through individual disorder realizations. We find that a power-law-type growth behavior appears typically after a disorder-dependent relaxation period, which is very close to the ${t}^{2}$ form derived in the effective Hamiltonian of a fully MBL system. The characteristic growth behavior observed at an individual disorder realization is robust in our tests with various state preparations and also verified in another MBL system of the random-transverse-field quantum Ising chain in a uniform longitudinal field.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.99.184202

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We investigate the typicality of the growth behavior of the out-of-time-ordered commutator (OTOC) in the many-body localized (MBL) quantum spin chains across random disorder realizations. In the MBL phase of the Heisenberg XXZ chain, we find that the estimate of the OTOC fluctuates significantly with the disorder realizations at the intermediate times of the main growth. Despite the consequent failure of the disorder average in the MBL phase, we argue that the characteristic behavior of the OTOC growth can still be identified by going through individual disorder realizations. We find that a power-law-type growth behavior appears typically after a disorder-dependent relaxation period, which is very close to the t2{t}^{2}t2 form derived in the effective Hamiltonian of a fully MBL system. The characteristic growth behavior observed at an individual disorder realization is robust in our tests with various state preparations and also verified in another MBL system of the random-transverse-field quantum Ising chain in a uniform longitudinal field.
In this paper we first compute the out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC) for both a phenomenological model and a random-field XXZ model in the many-body localized phase. We show that the OTOC decreases in power law in a many-body localized system at the scrambling time. We also find that the OTOC can also be used to distinguish a many-body localized phase from an Anderson localized phase, while a normal correlator cannot. Furthermore, we prove an exact theorem that relates the growth of the second Rényi entropy in the quench dynamics to the decay of the OTOC in equilibrium. This theorem works for a generic quantum system. We discuss various implications of this theorem.
We consider the spreading of a local operator A in one-dimensional many-body systems with Hamiltonian H by calculating the k -fold commutator [ H , [ H , [ . . . , [ H , A ] ] ] ] . We derive bounds for the operator norm of this commutator in free and interacting systems with and without disorder thus directly connecting the with questions of localization. We analytically show, in particular, that an almost-factorial growth of the operator norm—as recently proven for the random Ising model and strongly suggested here to also hold for the Heisenberg model with random fields—is inconsistent with an exponential localization of A . Assuming there exists a quasilocal unitary U which maps H onto an effective Hamiltonian H ̃ = U H U † = ∑ n E n τ n z + ∑ i , j J i j τ i z τ j z + ⋯ , we show that A ̃ = U A U † is a quasilocal operator which, in contrast to the Anderson case, indeed in the general many-body case, leading to an almost-factorial growth of the commutator norm. Therefore, either the unitary U in many-body systems with maximal norm growth does not exist, and such systems are always ergodic, or unusual nonergodic phases described by H ̃ exist which violate the operator growth hypothesis and in which local operators spread over the entire lattice, implying that transport will eventually set in. To investigate this issue further, we concentrate on the chain with random magnetic fields. We analytically and symbolically verify our general results for the noninteracting Anderson and Aubry-André models. For the case, the symbolic calculations are consistent with a maximal norm growth. Furthermore, we find no indication of a weakened exponential localization of A , expected for strong disorder and low commutator orders if the unitary U does exist. Finally, we study the differences between the interacting and noninteracting cases when trying to perturbatively construct U by consecutive Schrieffer-Wolff transformations. While it is straightforward to show that this construction converges in the Anderson case, we find no indications for a convergence in the interacting case, suggesting that U does not exist and that many-body localization is absent.
Abstract The connection between entanglement dynamics and non-equilibrium statistics in isolated many-body quantum systems has been established both theoretically and experimentally. Many-body localization (MBL), a phenomenon where interacting particles in disordered (i.e. random) chains fail to thermalize, exemplifies this connection. However, the systematic proof of critical phenomena such as MBL remains challenging due to the lack of robust methods for analyzing many-body entanglement dynamics. In this paper, we identify MBL through quasi-periodic dynamics in the entanglement evolution of subsystems in a disordered Heisenberg chain. This new form of characterizing MBL, through stable quasi-periodic dynamics of entanglement-where ‘stable’ means they persist in the thermodynamic limit—concretely distinguishes between two competing scenarios: fully localized behavior of subsystems or slowly, exponentially slow in disorder, thermalizing subsystems—a heated controversy in the literature. Utilizing perturbation theory, we derive the entanglement dynamics of single spins through an infinite perturbative series, while also modeling rare Griffiths regions (locally thermal inclusions). Our results prove that in regimes of sufficiently strong disorder, the entanglement evolution of individual subsystems remains quasi-periodic in the thermodynamic limit, thereby providing concrete evidence for the stability of MBL dynamics in disordered Heisenberg chains. This behavior contrasts with the widely reported logarithmic growth of subsystem entanglement in the MBL phase. We show that the logarithmic growth observed in prior studies arises from statistical ensemble averaging, which is prohibited due to the intrinsic non-ergodic dynamics characteristic of MBL systems, rooted in their quasi-periodic features.
Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) have emerged as a diagnostic of information scrambling and quantum chaos in many-body systems. We investigate the imprints of chaos in the dynamics of OTOCs in the Heisenberg spin-1/21/21/2 chain with random fields. The system is parameterized to exhibit a crossover from integrable to chaotic dynamics. We demonstrate numerically that the approach to saturation of the OTOC can distinguish between integrable and chaotic regimes, with a power-law (1/t)(1/t)(1/t) relaxation for integrable systems and a higher-degree power-law decay (1/tα;α≥1)(1/t^α; α\ge 1)(1/tα;α≥1) followed by an exponential relaxation for the chaotic regime. We further show that long-range spectral statistics, such as the number variance, are more effective in characterizing quantum chaos in the regime near saturation of OTOC. We also demonstrate that the relaxation and initial scrambling regimes exhibit distinct and universal features, with the former being sensitive and the latter being robust against different realizations of random-fields. The long-time saturation of OTOC also fluctuates with different realizations, and its exact expression is derived through the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis.
We study a canonical many-body-localized (MBL) system with power-law-correlated disorders: s=12s=\frac{1}{2}s=21​ spin chain in a random magnetic field. The power-law-correlated disorder can control the critical regime between the MBL and thermal (ergodic) phases by varying its exponent, and it let us investigate the MBL transitions in detail. Static-eigenstate and dynamic properties of MBL are studied by numerical methods for systems with various long-range correlations. By using energy-resolved distribution of the participation ratio (PR) and calculating some physical quantities related to localization length, we show that the MBL transition exhibits certain universal behavior. We also investigate entanglement properties for the static and dynamics system. These studies elucidate the impact of power-law-correlated disorders in the canonical MBL system.
We investigate the dynamics of strongly disordered spin chains in the presence of random local measurements. By studying the transverse-field Ising model with a site-dependent random longitudinal field and an effective lll-bit many-body localized Hamiltonian, we show that the prethermal and MBL regimes are unstable to local measurements along any direction. Any non-zero measurement density induces a volume-law entangled phase with a subsequent phase transition into an area-law state as the measurement rate is further increased. The critical measurement rate pcp_cpc​, where the transition occurs, is exponentially small in the strength of disorder WWW and the average overlap between the measurement operator and the local integrals of motion OOO as pc∼exp⁡[−αW/(1−O2)]p_c \sim \exp[-αW/(1-O^2)]pc​∼exp[−αW/(1−O2)]. In the measurement-induced volume-law phase, the saturation time scales as $t_s \sim L $, contrasting the exponentially slow saturation ts∼eaLt_s \sim e^{aL}ts​∼eaL in the prethermal and MBL regimes at p=0p = 0p=0.